


Child of My Heart

by playwithdinos



Series: Whetstone Verse [3]
Category: Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: Aftermath of Torture, Alternate Universe - 80's, Alternate Universe - Modern with Magic, Awkward family bonding, F/M, Kidfic, Solas and his moody teenage elvhen daughter, awkward family road trip, roughly
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-11-02
Updated: 2015-12-07
Packaged: 2018-04-29 13:23:50
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 10,035
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5129174
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/playwithdinos/pseuds/playwithdinos
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“<i>They will not have her</i>,” Cole mutters, softly, sadly. “<i>Let no God have her</i>. I couldn’t—” he hangs his head, a gesture so human that it only makes Solas’ unease worse. “She needed me. I couldn’t find you—I couldn’t leave her.”</p>
<p>Solas is torn between the desire to let Cole finish and the ache in his chest. No, he thinks, unable to say it. Unable to voice—is it hope or dread that has an iron grip around his heart? He doesn’t understand, doesn’t want to, needs to—</p>
<p>“<i>Let her be a hunter in the woods forever, child of my heart</i>,” Cole says, quickly, his voice lilting in an imitation of the Dalish brogue that haunts Solas’ dreams.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. A Hunter in the Woods

**Author's Note:**

> This fic is a prequel to the recently-completed [Whetstone](http://archiveofourown.org/works/3639087), and as such contains spoilers to the big reveal pretty late in the fic. However, this can be read as a standalone, if all you want is good old Solavellan angst without all the filler.

_Vhenan_.

There are—I have—

_How could you_?

No, that is... unkind of me. Let me start from the beginning. From your smile, from _anything I had to,_ from _you change everything_. From the softness of your flesh and the curve of your neck from _why not this one_ —

I have made mistakes, _ma sa’lath_. I have walked alone for ages uncounted, and when I thought you would lead me astray— _blissfully so,_ bright and shining and real that you are—I turned from the new path you offered me. And when the fruits of my labour lay in pieces at your feet I turned again, thinking as always that I knew best, that I would find a new way to take this broken world and wrench it apart at the seams.

But _vhenan_ , you have made a habit of stumbling upon events that might tear the world asunder, and I should not have been shocked to find you lying where Nightmare made to tear through the Veil, runes carved into the ground and your blood seeping into them—

— _you thought you were dying_. I held you in my arms and choked out _my heart, my heart,_ and _still_ , you didn’t tell me? How many years I wasted searching the Fade for your lost soul, only to—

_Ir abelas_. Not the beginning, then, but—another, certainly.

 

This part of Fereldan is only a little familiar even after all these years—the Hinterlands’ collection of scattered towns now with borders that have crashed into one another, separated by only roads, fences, yards or train tracks. Much of the forest he remembers is gone now, and the recent rains have made the ground run without the great roots to hold it.

They are planting trees, now.  Too many mudslides taking too many homes in recent weeks for even mortals to remain blissfully unaware of the consequences of their actions.

Still, with all the changes—towering poles with wires for electricity, television, phone lines—there are some spirits who remember him, who remember this place as it was. They cluster about him eagerly, something as old and older still than they, who is not afraid of them.

Many also remember the rain in her hair, the gentle way she smiled at an old man who could not tend to his wife’s grave with the roads closed. Some remember her laugh, and that in itself is reason enough for him to shut himself away from the Fade, so he cannot dream of her.

But he must—he has exhausted all other methods, everything else he knows. He must return to these places they once passed through, hand in hand, in hopes that her spirit wanders still. He must wade through memories of her, of how bright and shining she was, in the hopes of finding _her_ , not a spirit imitating some aspect of her it has treasured. Not some shade she has left behind, a shadow of what she was.

The hotel is built on ground they once camped on—the golf course around it has stolen up all the land around the lake, stretching down into the valley, and Solas tries to bite back his bitterness as he parks the car. The best place to sleep would have been on the ninth hole, on the shores of the lake where they’d lingered, spoken with soft words and laughter.

The hotel is only twenty years old—his bitterness is mostly directed at himself. He could have come here then and slept as he liked, if only he were not so stubborn.

The room is clean and tidy enough, the finishes dated and worn now. There is a recession in this area now, the boom that came with the logging long gone now, and the hotel is feeling the effects. An anxious spirit wanders the halls trying to balance books, make numbers and profits even out when they simply cannot. Solas cannot help it, and it is young enough to have no interest in him. He leaves it be, and settles his small amount of luggage on the floor.

There is a knock at the door as he shrugs off his rain-soaked jacket—and he frowns. He has not asked for room service, and there is no one living in this area that remembers him. The knock is strangely familiar to him, but—such things cannot be. He blames that on misguided nostalgia; that would be a spirit he has not met with in ages, even in his dreams. He has many hurts that will not heal, and Compassion could not linger in the face of them.

But it _is_ Compassion he finds when he opens the door, wearing washed-out clothing and his pale hair plastered to his pallid skin with the rain, dead eyes searching somewhere just past him.

“Cole,” Solas says, the name startled from him after all these years. “You—what are you doing here?”

“They are hurting her,” he says, and there’s such a horrifying moment where Solas thinks all his wards have failed, that the spirits he tasked with protecting her during his absence have fled or been corrupted. The hand on the doorknob clenches, and magic crackles at his fingertips, ice crystals forming and breaking along the lines of his knuckles.

“No,” Cole says, and the magic stops. “Not her. She never—she never _told you_ , would have but she couldn’t hear you, you came too late. She can’t tell you anything now.”

Solas _should_ feel immeasurable relief. But something coils up in his chest at what Cole is leaving unsaid, something sharp and so cold it’s biting, and his mouth is dry as he says, “Who, Cole? Who are they hurting?”

“ _They will not have her_ ,” Cole mutters, softly, sadly. “ _Let no God have her._ I couldn’t—” he hangs his head, a gesture so _human_ that it only makes Solas’ unease worse. “She needed me. I couldn’t find you—I couldn’t leave her.”

Solas is torn between the desire to let Cole finish and the ache in his chest. No, he thinks, unable to say it. Unable to voice—is it hope or dread that has an iron grip around his heart? He doesn’t understand, doesn’t want to, _needs_ to—

“ _Let her be a hunter in the woods forever, child of my heart_ ,” Cole says, quickly, his voice lilting in an imitation of the Dalish brogue that haunts Solas’ dreams. “And I tried but—it hunts her still, and she doesn’t know what it is, Dalish stories and felandaris all she has to defend herself from the things that stalk her dreams. _Never let her take up my burdens_ —I promised.”

“Cole,” Solas stammers, his voice thick. “What— _please_.”

“You have a daughter,” he says, voice low, even, as emotionless as only a spirit’s can be. “They are hurting her. I can’t reach her alone.”

Solas does not remember sitting down. But—he _is_ , and he isn’t even aware of it until Cole sits next to him on the edge of the bed. How... _worldly_ , this method of comfort is, he thinks as Cole takes his hand and holds it.

“I am sorry,” the spirit says, softly. “Shaking, shaken—wondered why and what she did, and now you _know_. You need time, but she doesn’t have it.”

“Of course,” Solas says, choking on something that’s rising up in his throat. A sob? He brings a hand to his face and is shocked to find it wet. He feels— _nothing_ , everything all at once. His soul raw from a single moment of sorrow and joy that are so tangled he can’t tell between them.

“Where is she?” he asks. His words are so opposite his thoughts, so slow even while his mind is a flurry, a blur, his chest paining with a heartache that is so _real_ and sudden that he cannot reconcile the two. What he felt when he’d realised the fate his _vhenan_ had doomed herself to was but a fraction of this hurt—a child. Hers. His. And she never—

_Emm’asha_ , he thinks, over and over. How could she tell him, when he would not stay?

It is too much. It must be impossible. His heart cannot possibly contain the ache it bears and keep beating on, he simply _cannot_ keep breathing.

“Tevinter,” Cole says, and Solas swallows the wave of dread that crashes over him.

 

Months later, after hundreds of favours exchanged, bribes made and more than one body thrown against a wall, Solas watches her emerge from the wreckage of the van with the wolf’s eyes.

He is not sure what he expected—an old woman, perhaps, some withering thing. Not a girl who looks like she could be nineteen, younger even, her hair wild with tangles, too long and unmanaged. Clad in something like a hospital gown, she looks around her at the carnage and death Solas has left in his wake with an expression that is forced blank, but cracking.

Her left hand is—he can barely make it out, from this distance, but he can smell the copper tang of blood magic that keeps the wound open and uninfected. It hangs uselessly at her side, until rain water runs into the wound and she curses, clutching it to her chest to protect it.

He wants nothing more than to gather her in his arms and hold her there, and never let her go. But the wolf is covered in blood, the stink of ancient magic, of fuel and flame and she is Dalish besides, however many years she has been removed from their care. She will not take to him like this, and he is too far from his car to carry her to it.

The reminder of her injury seems to have spurred her—she goes for the closest corpse and pulls off the man’s pants. One handed, with some difficulty—but she manages to shove them on over her bare legs, cursing all the while.

She takes the man’s jacket next, and only shoves her right arm through a sleeve. The left she shields close to her chest, reaching around to gather the jacket’s open flap closed around her. Then she takes off, her bare feet slapping against the road. She does not look behind her at the crash, at the corpses of her captors scattered around the ditch. She only crosses the road, bare feet slapping on wet pavement in the pouring rain, and disappears into the trees.

It takes him _too much time_ to reach his car—precious time now, that she seems to be avoiding the road in her panic. Cole is still not there—has not been for days. It’s probably for the best—his friend seeing him thus would upset the spirit, the pain and rage in Solas’ heart likely too much for Compassion to bear. There are no words to be a balm for the sight of his child— _a child he knew nothing about_ —clutching her hand to herself and stumbling off into the rain. No words to soothe the aches in his heart carried by her sharp cry of pain as she climbed out of the wreck of the van.

He sheds his wolf form and all the blood and death with it. He climbs into his car and drives back to the highway, begging that whatever spirits might come upon her will keep her to the road, that he will find her before she passes too far into the wilderness to be found.

When he does find her— _oh, vhenan_. There is so much of her mother in her. Even with her too-thin limbs and the gauntness of her cheeks, he sees an echo of her mother in her nose, in the shape of her face, in the lines of vallaslin that curl up from her cheekbones and into her hairline. The exact same in every detail; colour, form, chosen god to emulate. Deliberate, he knows, and that aches at his heart with a new pain where he thought there was room for none—he had hoped, beyond all reason for hoping, that she would be unmarked.

He has to lift her, and he is wrong again—there is _still_ room in his wretched heart for pain. For the frailness of her, the tenseness of her limbs—he can tell she wants to fight him, that she is so used to battle and blood and death that she expects a threat in every gesture of help.

He wants to never let her go. To make up for lost years, a century of unknowing neglect for which he can only blame himself.

_Oh, da’len_ , he thinks, as she begs him not to take her to a hospital. _Emm’asha. What have I wrought?_

It is all he can bear to allow her privacy in the bathroom, to change out of her stolen clothing, soaked through with heavy rain, and the hospital gown, into some spare clothing he keeps in the back of his car. All he has to offer—he wonders how he never thought to find something more appropriate, on the mad rush here. There was no time.

Then he hears her retching, and he _cannot bear_ it, cannot possibly listen to her pain where he might soothe some small part of it. He wishes fervently for Cole, but the spirit is not listening and does not come.

Her eyes in the bathroom light are sunken, haunted, wild. They are not the amber of her mother, or his piercing blue—they are Fade green, so bright they cannot be real, cannot possibly exist beside the copper of her skin and the hook of her nose. Dulled by fever, alert with fear, they are wary as he cleans her face with a wet cloth. They flutter shut, then, as if she has decided something—or given up, but he cannot tell which it is.

He helps her change out of her soaked clothing, as she seems suddenly unable to do it herself—fever setting in, she is shaking beyond control, teeth chattering and skin raised all over in small bumps, although her skin burns at his touch.

She is so, so thin. Battle worn and torment wearied.

“Can you keep a secret?” he whispers, when she is dried and clothed and seated on the bed, and she allows him to take her battered hand in his own. But what he wants to say dies in his throat when he sees up close the ruin of her hand, what his carelessness has done to her, and it is his magic he shows her instead.

 

“Ah,” Solas says as she comes out of the bathroom. “Good, it fits.”

The dress is— _old_ , and he knows it. It doesn’t quite fit her right, the neckline sliding off one bony shoulder and it hangs loose where it should fit tight. He bought it— _years_ ago, for her mother, to change her out of her old Dalish leathers with the hole in them where she’d nearly bled out. Hadn’t had the heart to take them away from her, in the end, and the dress had stayed in a box in his car.

She clenches her left hand, recently healed. He wonders if it pains her still.

 “I imagine it's a little old for your tastes,” he says, soft laughter hiding his conflict. “But it will do until we get into town.”

Her gaze is fixated on something on the wall Solas can’t see. “Where are we?” she asks, with a voice that claws from her throat, scratched and raw.

She winces, and Solas thinks it is in pain. It is all he can do to keep himself from surging forward—he takes steps that are not hesitant enough, although he doesn’t quite _rush_ to her side.

 “May I?” he asks. 

She nods, and be brings his fingertips to her throat. He is careful to only brush her skin there, keeping his touch brief, fleeting.

_Raw for screaming_ , he thinks.

“We are on the outskirts of Nevarra.” He tells her, his voice even and smooth.

She bites her lip. “Near Tevinter?”

“We are near the border to Orlais.”

She nods. “I'm sorry. I don't –do you know the date?”

He wishes, for a moment, that there are gods he might believe in, so he can call their name like a curse. 

 “The tenth of Bloomingtide,” he says, gently.

Her gaze falls from his.

 “How long?” he asks.

“Almost a year,” she says, distantly.

He will kill them all, he thinks as he looks upon her. He suddenly finds the deaths of those he killed with the wolf’s great jaws are not _enough_ , their screams of horror as they died cut far, far too short.

He drops his hands from her throat to disguise their shaking.

When she speaks again, her voice is hale, but still too soft by far. “ _Ma serannas, hahren_.”

He frowns, caught between the urge to demand names or places and the desire to simply hold her. The truth is almost startled from him—he _almost_ corrects her, and he has to stifle the urge as the words almost escape his lips.

“I will trouble you no longer,” she says, and tries to move past him, ducking her head.

“ _Da'len_ ,” he says, and he grabs her shoulders.

She _jerks_ in place, her whole body going impossibly still the moment he touches her. The look she gives him is such _rage_ , such _fight_ , and as she scowls up at him there is a furrowing of the bridge of her nose that is _not_ her mother’s at all, but his.

 “ _Ir abelas, da’len,_ ” he says, “but I don’t think you're in any condition to travel alone.”

“ _Ar tel'da’len, hahren,_ ” she spits.

“I can see that,” he says, and he cannot help but be a little patronizing. “But you intend to rush into danger? After so long under what I can only assume was torture? Why?”

She does not meet his gaze. 

 “I have a promise to keep,” she says, and her voice catches. He cannot help but grip her _tighter_ at the sound of it, and he can see her waver in place, see her eyes squeeze shut as she attempts to keep herself together.

Solas’ heart is in his throat. He doesn’t know what he will do if she starts crying, and she looks very near it in this moment.

Then there's a knock at the door.

“I can't come in unless you open,” comes Cole’s frantic voice from the other side.

She stumbles free of Solas’ grasp as he turns, and he watches her fumble with the deadbolt and chain until she flings the door open.

Standing there in the late afternoon light is Cole, holding a paper bag that smells familiar in a way Solas doesn’t instantly place.

“ _Isa’ma’lin,”_  she breathes.

“I'm sorry,” he says. Then, so softly, “You can cry now. You're safe.”

Solas watches his _vhenan’s_ child as her knees give out. He moves forward, arms outstretched, but it is Cole who catches her. Cole who she clings to, buries her face in his chest and she begins to shake so _violently_ that Solas realises she is sobbing—openly, unabashedly sobbing, without making a single sound.

Compassion murmurs her thoughts into the silence, so softly that Solas hears only the tone of his voice. He watches as Cole holds her, tight and close in a way Solas has never seen the spirit do for anyone. His eyes over her shoulder are vacant, somewhere else, and they look _past_ Solas, past the tiny motel room.

Solas stands and watches as Compassion wipes her tears away; his hands hang by his side, as useless as his heart in his throat.

 

She says nothing for two days—and because there are too many police asking about the crash in the next town, she wears the same, old, floral patterned dress he found for her. They cross the border without incident—Solas has no passport for her when they are stopped, but Cole whispers words of love long lost, and the teary-eyed security guard waves them on into Orlais.

She asks for nothing—they eat wherever they find food; at night it’s in the car as Solas drives, whatever vegetables or sandwiches Solas can buy them from local cafes in the small Orlesian towns they pass.

When they stop for lunch on the third day, Cole coaxes her out of the front seat and into daylight—and among them Solas seems to be the only one aware of those who watch as they steady her when she stumbles.

She still has no shoes. She looks lost and despondent, run so thin and ragged that Solas knows for sure without Cole the police would have been called each and every time they stop and she climbs out of the car.

There are few similarities between himself and his silent charge—the furrow of her nose when she is angry, the shape of her cheekbones—so Solas puts up with scandalized glares, skeptical looks as he sits her in a chair outside a small cafe, were the sunlight will warm her face.

“You know how those elves are,” a human says as he and the woman he is with walk past.

He resists the urge to fling a lightning bolt at the back of the man’s skull as he sits, and tries to figure out what his long lost child is thinking. Even that is impossible, and he is distracted enough by the vacancy of her expression that he cannot even get riled up by rude service from the man who takes their order.

“We ask that our patrons wear shoes,” he says, an eyebrow quirked as he sends not so subtle glances at their ears.

“You may ask,” Solas replies, automatically. “We would each like water, the bisque, and _pan bagnat_ , please.”

The waiter makes to leave, and the girl beside Solas says, “ _Un cafe, monsieur_.”

He pauses. “ _Au lait_?”

“ _Non_. _Merci._ ”

The waiter leaves, and Solas raises a brow. “You speak Orlesian?” he asks.

She shrugs—that in itself more of a reaction than she’s given him since breaking down upon Cole’s arrival. “No. I just know how to order coffee in every language,” she says.

“Every language?”

“Coffee, black. _Hynbana, sathem. Cafe solo doble_.”

She rattles off several more, and Solas does not know which languages they match. She finishes with Tevene—deliberately, he thinks, watching the twist of her mouth as it shuts on the last syllable.

She lapses into silence for a while, and Solas has _questions_ , but he knows there is such a hurt behind the stone of her expression—to be immortal in _this_ world, to not understand why.

_Every language_ , he thinks. Wonders how many people she has left behind out of necessity.

It’s a hint enough, and his thoughts run with it. A hint on how far she has travelled; to remote enough places that she can’t always rely on Trade. Or, the necessity to offer familiarity to those she interacts with—or, and perhaps more accurately, to make herself less threatening. _See, I am a well-behaved knife ear. I have learned enough of your language to ask for services I require. I am not suspicious in any way._

The waiter returns with her coffee and their water, and Solas watches her take the little mug and hold it between her palms.

Solas pours himself a glass of water from the pitcher and asks, “How is your hand?”

She sips her coffee, as if rationing it, as she considers her answer.

“She can feel her fingers again,” says Cole, suddenly hovering over her shoulder. He inclines his head closer to her, and says in a lower voice, “She hasn’t thanked you—it’s _hard_ , words and everything underneath. You’ve helped one hurt but everything else is wretched and raw.”

“ _Isa’ma’lin_ ,” she mutters.

“She’s been meaning to thank you, Solas,” Cole says, simply.

She avoids Solas’ gaze, but he finds himself smiling anyway. “You have been through much,” he tells her. “If I can help in any—”

“Where are we going?” she asks. Her hands clench the tiny little mug—ceramic, _Orlesian_ , white with a little trace of dark brown where the liquid swirled up in her grasp.

_Where are you taking me_ , is what she means to ask. He can see it in the corners of her eyes as she stares right at him.

But the waiter brings their food, and Solas cannot answer. They both sit with their sandwiches in front of them—her with her hands clutching that tiny cup of coffee, and Solas with his clasped in his lap, where she can’t see how white his knuckles have gone.

As always, Solas falls back on precisely half the truth.

“I had no destination in mind,” he tells her, “and I will not take you anywhere you do not wish to go. I only planned on heading as far away from Tevinter as I could—if there is somewhere you wish to go, then I will take you there.”

She raises a single brow at him, but does not name a place or a direction. She does not attempt to convince him to take her back to Tevinter—perhaps she is unwilling to risk him in this matter, or she knows he and Cole will not allow it. Solas picks at his sandwich and she drinks her coffee, only eating when Cole prods her to do so, gently.

When they stand to leave, the waiter walks out with tears blurring his eyes and a takeout box filled to brimming with croissants, pastries, and delicate cakes. He shoves them into Solas’ hands, wordlessly, and then walks away.

“ _Isa’ma’lin_ ,” she says, exasperated.

There is a ghost of a smile on Cole’s lips. “You need to eat more.”

Solas cannot find it in himself to be angry.

 

She sits in the front seat of the car while he drives, her bare feet propped up on the dashboard and the box open in her lap. Neither of them have eaten anything in it—Solas finds himself unsettled by their earlier conversation, and that she has yet to offer a destination.

_What did you leave her to, vhenan_ , he wonders. _What did I leave her to?_

Cole is in the backseat, and every time Solas glances in the rearview mirror he sees a pair of pale, piercing eyes behind a mess of blond hair. The spirit does not speak—Solas wonders at that, at Compassion leaving pain to simmer instead of bringing it into the open where it can heal. He has never known Cole to exhibit tact—there is an absence of _helping_ only when he is in the middle of it, when there is to be a childhood toy found on a bed later, or a nostalgic smell wafting through an open window.

He is unsettled that Cole is not _actively_ helping. He would like to know what is coming, so he can avoid it somehow.

“Who names their kid Pride?” She wonders, out of the blue.

“Hm?”

“Your name. Did you pick that?”

He spends a moment wondering where this is coming from, before he remembers that he never actually introduced himself. Cole speaking his name at the cafe is the first time she’s heard his name. Then he wonders if it’s a name her mother ever mentioned, and he can feel his heart beat against his chest in a very real panic.

“Sorry,” she says, mistaking his silence for something else. “I just—I have one of those ridiculously meaningful names, too, and I hate it. Just wondering if we could commiserate.”

“Oh?” He spares her a glance. There is still enough sunlight he can make out her expression—the downward twist of her lips, the way her eyes narrow as she stares at the road ahead.

She offers nothing further, her thoughts clearly elsewhere.

“It was my first,” he says, and she jolts out of wherever her mind has wandered so abruptly he can hear the packaging in her lap rustle. “I have had other names given to me. I wore them like a badge of honour. But—”

He is surprised at the falter in his own voice, and how he cannot continue. He exhales and it becomes a sigh.

“I have made many mistakes,” he tells her, “thinking that I knew best. I have never been able to leave my Pride behind me, and all it entails.”

She breathes out. “How very wise,” she says, her voice low and biting.

He cannot help the low, dark laugh that escapes him. “I think it is too late for me to be considered wise.”

She does not respond to that.

Cole breaks the insufferable silence with, “You should tell her.”

Solas takes in a sharp breath.

“He likes the _fraisier_ ,” Cole continues, with barely a heartbeat for Solas to adjust. “No, that’s an opera slice. It takes like coffee, he won’t like it. It’s the one with strawberries— _yes_.”

Solas glances to his right. She is holding up a slice of cake on a little golden board, perfectly rectangular. He only looks long enough to see the red of the strawberries inside the cake, the green of the marzipan on top, before he looks back at the road again.

The breath that she lets out _almost_ sounds like laughter. “You’re hungry, _hahren_? You should have said something.”

He wonders what her laughter really sounds like. How different her voice might be when she is happy, safe.

“I suppose I didn’t eat much lunch,” he admits, and he holds out one of his hands.

She breaks the cake in half—messily—and drops his half in his palm. He bites into it—the marzipan on top is sweet, a touch of texture to contrast with the soft sponge on the bottom and the delicate mousse inside. The strawberries taste vibrant, fresh even though they are not quite in season.

He is licking the last bit of icing off his fingers when he hears a delighted noise from the passenger seat.

He glances over to see her— _mid-bite_ , eyes wide open with _expression_ , with _wonder_ , and he can feel his heart flutter against his ribcage at the sight. She blinks, rapidly, and it is all Solas can manage to tear his gaze from her to look back at the road, to focus on driving.

In the space between his first glimpse of her delight and the next, her half of the cake is gone and she’s licking her fingers clean.

“ _Isa’ma’lin_ ,” she says, and her voice is full of such unrestrained _delight_ that he cannot help the warmth spreading through his chest, all the way up to the smile on his lips. “You said one was coffee flavoured?”

Cole points it out again, and she devours it as quickly as the last.

His heart has been too full of sorrow as of late, and the wonder in her eyes is too much. She has seemed too old for her years these past few days—he is thinking of her in terms of _elvhen_ , not an elf of the present—but the urgency with which she digs through the box, demanding Cole tell her which ones are best...

She holds up an _éclair_. “Please tell me this isn’t supposed to be a donut,” she says, her brow furrowed in confusion as she turns it over in her hand.

“It’s cabbage paste,” Cole tells her, dutifully.

Something like horror crosses her features. “There’s _cabbage_ in this?!”

Solas cannot help a laugh—he _cannot_. Her head whips around to glare at him, and Solas bites his knuckles to disguise his mirth too late.

He spares a glance from the road. Her eyes are narrowed, but there is an amused smirk creeping up her lips.

“It is made from _patê à choux,”_ Solas says. “So called because it supposedly resembles cabbage when baked.”

She gives the pastry a suspicious look.

“Fucking Orlesians,” she grumbles before she takes a bite, and Solas laughs so hard he nearly swerves off the road.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> (Ma) Vhenan - (my) Heart  
> Ma sa'lath - my one love  
> Ir abelas - Expression of sorrow (i.e. I'm so sorry)  
> Da'len - Child (lit. little person)  
> Ma serennas, hahren - My thanks, elder.  
> Ar tel'da'len, hahren - I'm not a child, elder.  
> Emm'asha - My girl  
> Isa'ma'lin - brother. Courtesy project elvhen.  
> \--
> 
> So I basically can't escape sad elf feels ever apparently
> 
> I don't know how long this is going to be, I just needed to get it out of my system apparently.


	2. For the Unprepared

_Vhenan_ I have wandered and searched, waited and wished that you might return to me. How many years has it been? It is too easy to lose track.

Did you know my plans, then? When what should have been your dying breaths became linked to what I raised millennia ago, when you bled out onto the runes you carved, and strengthened the Veil with your very soul?

I will always wonder, it seems, if you knew the only way to stop me from ripping it all down was to make your death the consequence—or if it was done in ignorance, and once again you stumbled upon something greater than yourself and conquered it.

I no longer wonder why. _How_ you became aware of Nightmare’s plans, _why_ you went so far to stop them.

I know it now, _ma vhenan._ Too late, as always.

 

Solas and his estranged, unknowing child fall into something like routine, something like a rhythm to their lives now that he has found her. She gives him no destination, no inkling that she will stay or leave and he goes to sleep every night convinced she will be gone, only to wake and find her sitting cross-legged and staring out the window of whatever room they have rented for the night. Compassion sits next to her always, muttering something soft and comforting that is not meant for Solas’ ears.

There are dark circles under her eyes, always, and at first Solas wonders if she sleeps at all.

Quickly he discovers that when she does sleep, it is fitful and unresting. She does not cry out—she makes little sound but the heaviness of her frantic breathing, the slide of her clothing and sheets as she tosses and turns, caught in the throes of a nightmare he has no urge to witness.

Cole always wakes her shortly after, and he hushes her softly even though she speaks no words into the air between them. In the dark, Solas can make out her lips moving, but she is too terrified to make a sound.

One night, they are sharing a bag of greasy Antivan takeout in a shady motel room when Cole reappears from wherever he has wandered with something wrapped in a bedsheet. He offers it to her, wordlessly, and Solas only looks between them with a puzzled expression.

She rubs the grease from her food off on the legs of her jeans before she takes the bundle. “Cole, what did you bring me?”

“Safety,” Cole says. He rubs his hands together. “It doesn’t smell right,” he adds, as if apologizing.

She sets the gift in her lap and unfolds the sheet. It’s a bow and a handful of arrows—well used, Solas notes, for the tips of the arrows are dulled and the fletching is rough. The bow has many scratches in its surface, the leather grip well worn by larger hands than those holding it now.

“I didn’t steal it,” he tells her as she opens her mouth. “Locked away from the world so long—lonely. Wants to be held again.”

Solas narrows his eyes, and isn’t sure if Cole is speaking of the bow or the elvhen girl on the bed.

She tests the draw of the bow, gingerly—she doesn’t draw it very far, but she does lift it as if she is aiming somewhere in the distance. Her eyes narrow, and she lowers the bow to her lap once more.

“Just because someone isn’t using it anymore doesn’t mean it’s not stealing,” she tells him, her voice thick.

“You’re welcome,” Cole says.

“You are an archer?” Solas asks, gently, when the silence is too much.

She hums. “A hunter,” she says. “Back with... my clan.”

He knows he should ask her what clan that is. Where they are, if she would like to return to them—any unknowing stranger would. Anyone Cole had plucked out of thin air and roped into helping.

Instead he studies the tightness of her limbs, the way her expression is forced smooth, impassive. He cannot bring himself to pretend, to ask her a question that will only bring her more pain.

_Ir abelas_ , he almost says. He cannot hope to say it enough—his mouth is dry, and his hands are still.

 

Solas has not wandered the Fade since he found her nearly a month ago—he dreams, true, but little and lightly. Rage visits him, and Solas has to force himself awake so he does not burn the building to the ground. Despair is persistent, a cloak resting on his shoulders as he wakes, as he leads Cole and his daughter south and then west.

When Solas does Dream again—true dreams, wandering through the past—the Fade is a welcome relief. He slips his awareness through the Veil with little effort the moment his eyes are closed.

At first the scenery is muddled—jumbled impressions from those sleeping in the rooms near him. There are spirits flitting about at the edges of the awareness of those physically near him, and Solas tries to pay them little heed—he sees a wisp of a spirit draw close to the dark, troubled thoughts of a man who has rented a room in the floor above, and distracts it with a spark of light from his own fingers.

Gleefully, the wisp comes when called. Bright, shimmering, it catches the spark Solas has called to his hands and grasps it with poorly-formed hands—chubby and infantile, if ill-defined. What it has for eyes are poor imitations of those found in the physical world—large, gleaming circles with galaxies’ worth of little lights swirling in them—but Solas sees delight in them nonetheless as it examines his magic, the spark of his soul.

“What sort of spirit will you be, I wonder?” he muses, watching the little spark of life attempt to gnaw on the gift with poorly-formed teeth.

“Wonder,” it repeats, around a mouthful of light. “I wonder. I wonder. I wonder.”

The wisp follows Solas as he walks, and he does not bid it to leave. Instead he searches through all the years of memories compressed into this place until he finds a thread of what he seeks—the hotel vanished, only a dirt road under his feet and the searing heat of the sun on his back.

Spirits rush to fill in the scene around him as he walks, the wisp still hovering just over his shoulder. Tents appear out of thin air, and soldiers appear mid-stride with rifles, binoculars, desert camouflage and scarves thrown over their necks.

Before him stretches out the Western Approach. He feels air tousle his clothing—the heat of it burns at his exposed skin, sends the grit of sand stinging into suddenly dry eyes. He licks his lips to find them split and dry, his mouth drier still. He has to squint against the sunlight glaring off the sand, and he raises a hand to shield his eyes as he peers into the distance.

He sees no evidence of a party venturing forth—but that does not mean she is _here_.

He stops a man who is cleaning his rifle.

“I am looking for the Inquisitor,” he says. “Have you seen her?”

The Human looks at him rather strangely. “The Inquisitor will be scouting ahead, ser,” he says, returning to his weapon. “As usual. She’ll be headed west, towards the old fortress.”

Solas looks in that direction, but the Fade provides him with no solid forms off in the distance—only the endless wasteland.

“Aren’t you normally with her, ser?” the soldier asks.

“Not for some time,” Solas answers, and starts walking.

He crosses vast expanses of the Fade in a matter of steps, the scenery changing about him rapidly as he follows paths he once walked at her side—still, there is no evidence of her. He passes by stone waymarkers with surfaces long worn away by sand and wind, caves with the stench of death and spider venom about them, rickety wooden structures meant to help traverse this strange wasteland.

He finds no evidence of her passing, at any of them. No footprints in the sand, no spatters of blood from her enemies, no deathroot cut short.

Eventually, he comes across a Venatori camp—and it gives him pause for a moment, because it is empty. Not even a single corpse to be found, just the camp itself, with a fire still burning, books with torn pages scattering to the wind, supplies gone rotten in the heat.

Because he finds the emptiness of the camp peculiar, it suddenly becomes occupied. The ground is littered with corpses and buzzing flies, and the stench of their exposed innards wafts across Solas’ nose. He wrinkles it in disgust and approaches the camp, his ears twitching at the sound of laboured breathing somewhere in its midst.

He finds the man in question—a Venatori foot soldier, some hired mercenary. His left leg is gone at the knee, and the man is trying to crawl under the shade of an empty crate.

Solas kneels at the man’s side. He recognises the spirit in question immediately—a minor terror spirit, capturing the man’s last moments dutifully.

“I am looking for the Inquisitor,” he says. He offers no healing, no comfort—neither would appeal to this particular spirit.

“Lavellan?” the spirit croaks through cracked and bloody lips.

“Yes,” Solas says, irritated, “Inquisitor Lavellan. She may have come this way—tell me where you have seen her.”

The spirit launches itself at Solas, its form twisting into something gaunt, elvhen, marked. Solas jerks back and attempts to banish it with a wave of his hand—his will surges against the spirit and its form dissipates into smoke before it retreats, only to form again a few feet away.

This time, its form is a different man altogether—ragged looking, bone thin. He is holding another form captive—a young elven woman, Dalish by her markings. Solas draws himself up and takes a cautious step towards the spirit, his brows furrowing as he examines it.

The wisp follows. “I wonder,” it says, high-pitched and frantic. “I wonder.”

“Please,” the girl is saying, “I don’t know who you’re talking about.”

“Lavellan,” the man snarls back, “take me to Lavellan!”

This is not his memory, he realises with a start. Before he can say anything, answer any questions, the man produces something green and sparking from his coat.

Solas’ heart drops in his chest. _The orb_.

“How is this possible?” he snaps, advancing on the spirit. “It was destroyed! Ruined, along with the anchor—”

“Una!” comes the cry from behind him, and Solas whirls.

He no longer stands in the desert, but in the dark depths of an ancient temple. His eyes flit over the crumbling frescos and half-looted mosaics and he determines it to be one of Ghilanain’s—a minor one that would reside in the modern-day Free Marches.

A number of Dalish youth approach, their bows trained on the man holding the girl named Una. They are not all spirits, he realises quickly—most are, but there is one standing off to the side who shines too bright to be anything but—

“Solas?” the girl says, her hands stilling mid-draw on her bow.

“Take off your hood,” the spirit demands. “Take off your _fucking_ hood!”

Solas banishes the dream from around them, his thoughts whirling, and the girl turns her bow on him.

The wisp hides behind him with a giggle, as if this is a game.

“What demon are you?” she demands. Her hands are shaking. “The same as usual? Come to tempt me again?”

Solas cannot respond immediately. He waves his hand and calls to mind one of Mythal’s gardens from the time of Arlathan—in her most sacred of temples, deep in the south. A great wolf statue reclines by a pool, its form relaxed, and to the side there is a structure made of glass with sheer, delicate curtains that sway in the gentle breeze. The light of the setting sun passes through the trees around them, casting the scene in brilliant gold and green.

She still has the bow trained on him, her hood still up. Solas tries to gather his thoughts, and fails miserably.

“This is all very pretty,” she tells him. “Desire, then? Come to tell me I’ll never be left alone again?”

Solas waves his hand and a couch appears beneath the glass and flowing fabrics. He sits on it, focusing on his breathing, and rests his face in his hands.

“… Despair?” she guesses next. She sounds confused, a little frightened. “I—I don’t really know what you’re doing, demon, but you won’t have me by crying about it.”

“I wonder,” the wisp chimes helpfully, circling around Solas.

“I’m sorry,” he says, abruptly. “I did not realise I would intrude on your dreams.” He finds his voice surprisingly even, for the whirlwind of his thoughts.

He can hear the creak of her bowstring, the sound of her leathers shifting as she draws the arrow back further.

“Tell me what you are, then,” she says, “if you feel so badly.”

He looks up at her. Standing some distance away, he can make out the determined lines of her expression beneath the shadows of her hood. There is fear in her eyes, catching the light and gleaming back at him in bright green circles.

Again, his confession catches in his throat.

“I am Solas,” he says instead.

She gives him an incredulous look. “Pride?” she wonders, mistaking his meaning. “No offense, but you don’t exactly look like you normally do.”

He laughs, dark and pained. The wisp laughs along, mimicking his tone in a higher register.

“And _that_ is…?”

“Wonder!” it answers, quickly, and in the blink of an eye it is hovering about her bow, drawing the tiny hands of a child along its string.

“I’ve never met a demon named _Wonder_ ,” she tells it, drawing back. Her bow is still drawn tight, still aimed at Solas, but he scowls at the wisp instead.

“It is harmless,” he tells her as he stands. “A newly born spirit, barely more than a wisp.”

He approaches her with his hands clasped behind his back. Her gaze snaps back to his, and he stops in his tracks.

“Hands where I can see them.”

Solas raises his slowly. “ _Da’assan_ ,” he says, gently. “I am no demon come to tempt you.”

She purses her lips. “I would say I’ve heard that before,” she says, “but demons are usually pretty honest about the whole _possession_ thing.”

“Which ones?” he chokes out, and immediately has to stifle the overwhelming rage that courses through him.

She looks at him curiously while he collects himself.

“I apologize,” he says. “I—should have _anticipated_ you being a Dreamer. I should have put safeguards in place to prevent you from following me into my dreams.”

“What?”

He begins to pace. The sunlight around them begins to shift colour, as if a great many clouds have suddenly appeared in the sky. “There are many dangers here for the unprepared, and I have carelessly exposed you to them.”

“What?” she says again, with significantly more alarm.

The wind begins to howl at his back, and Solas looks up at the sky. A darkness like stormclouds is whirling overhead, and he feels the warmth and brightness of Wonder press closer to him with a cry. He feels something… _powerful_ lurking at the edges of the dream, waiting for it to unravel at the seams.

His control over the dream has slipped—from him to her. He turns and sees a great fissure of a crack open up in the glass structure, sees the sheer curtains burn and crumble to pieces in the searing wind.

He shields his eyes with his arm and turns back to her— _still_ holding her bow, still pointing it at him, oblivious to the destruction her terror is weaving into the dream. Her expression is tight with fear, her eyes vacant—her attention elsewhere, somewhere Solas cannot quite reach.

_What is she so frightened of_ , he wonders.

“ _Da’assan_ ,” he calls, but she does not hear him.

Solas crosses the distance between them without a care for the weapon aimed at his heart. She does not notice when he dashes it aside, when it clatters to the ground somewhere behind her. He doesn’t even blink when he shoves her hood back from her face, when he gathers her close and presses his forehead against hers.

He calls for her three times before she _jerks_ , gasps for air as if she’s been drowning. She tries to struggle against him, weakly—her focus disoriented from the attack, she manages little more than to make fists in his clothing and shove against him ineffectually.

He has to yell in her ear to be heard over the maelstrom her terror is making.

“Wake up!” he yells, and the dream shatters around them both.

 

Solas gives himself a moment to breathe after he jolts awake, and in that moment his child jumps on top of him and there is an arrow at his throat.

His eyes snap open, and he stares up at her—her eyes wide and frantic, the bow at full draw and the string _trembles_ with tension.

He can only think that, as far as endings go, this one is particularly fitting.

Then she seems to remember to _breathe_ , and her shoulders shake. He swallows, and he can feel the brush of the arrow’s tip against his skin.

“ _Da’assan_ ,” he says, softly.

She narrows her eyes at him, and he feels the arrow press more firmly against his skin.

“What the fuck was that?” she manages to say. Her voice is _so quiet_ , so soft he can barely hear her.

“If you get off,” he tells her, “I will explain.”

She does not. “Who sent you?” she demands, her voice growing stronger. “Who told you about me?”

“Cole,” he answers, truthfully.

“Bullshit,” she says. “Why—why would he come to you? Who are you? How do you know him?”

“He is an old friend. He found me in Fereldan and told me that you needed my help.”

“An old friend,” she echoes, and her eyes are narrowing again with suspicion. Solas finds himself wondering if he has given himself away.

“I have met many spirits,” he says, as gently as he can. “Many of them I consider to be my friends.”

“Rage?” she asks. “Despair? Terror? Sounds like a party.”

“Wisdom,” he tells her, his hands clenched at his sides. There is pleading at the edges of his voice, pain at what has been drawn to her in his absence. “Compassion. Loyalty. Valor. I have found them in the Fade, in my wanderings.”

“And Cole? You find him while _wandering_ too?”

He exhales, slowly, even as his mind races as he tries to figure out what to say. _The truth_ , some small part of him offers, but there is an arrow at his throat and the phrase _I am your father and I abandoned you to this_ is possibly the worst thing to say in this moment. So he tells himself.

He settles on, “Cole is different.” His voice falters as he says it. “He was drawn to... someone I care about. Someone who helped people.”

“She was so bright.”

Solas almost groans with relief at the sound of Cole’s voice coming from the space between the beds. The girl doesn’t move, but her head inclines toward the sound ever so slightly.

“Too bright, too brief. Fleeting and fast—oh, but she laughs, warm enough to wonder, wise and wild and her heart is _too great_ , too vast to be contained in her. On waking, in grief, you asked this world what you had wrought in your Pride; she is the answer it gave.”

Solas closes his eyes and—and tries to just breathe. But his chest shakes with every breath, and he thinks, _oh vhenan_ , and he tries not to let Cole’s words hurt but—

“You left,” Cole says. “And you wish you could take it back, let the world she offered be the one you chose. But all you have now is this one, and it does not shine so bright.”

“Cole,” the girl atop Solas says, gently. “This is... incredibly personal.”

There is no longer an arrow to his neck. He hadn’t noticed.

She moves, and he is no longer pinned beneath her. He opens his eyes and looks up to the sight of her seated on the edge of the bed, her back to him and the bow and arrow resting on her lap.

“Cole,” she says. “You didn’t just want Solas’ help to rescue me from Tevinter.”

Solas draws himself up off his back. He sits on the edge of the bed, at what he hopes is a respectful distance away.

Cole wrings his hands. “He can do better than Felandaris.”

She clenches and unclenches her left hand.

“Felandaris?” Solas asks, and he remembers something else Cole said, months ago. “You—you take felandaris to avoid the Fade?”

She makes a face. “When I was little. Can’t anymore,” she confesses. “Makes me throw up.”

Solas is surprised there is still room in him for more rage. He has to get up off the bed and pace the floor of their hotel room—cramped as it is, there is not enough space and the action does nothing to soothe his frustrations.

“Solas?”

“How young?” he manages to say, past the closing of his throat.

She does not answer him immediately. He cannot look at her, but he knows this sudden change is puzzling to her—he thinks, belatedly, that she is still armed and he is not, and he can see her hands grip the bow a little tighter.

“I started having nightmares when I was six.”

He does the math as quickly as he can in his head. His steps slow as his heart drops, until he finally comes to a stop with his back to the confused girl on the bed.

_Vhenan_ , he thinks. Brings a shaking hand to his face.

All his questions—oh, he had thought it all a ploy to stop him from tearing down the Veil. Had thought his _vhenan_ had learned of his plans, had seized her chance. Instead, it was a trap laid by a powerful demon looking for a host—that had backfired magnificently. He should not be surprised his _vhenan_ made a habit of such things.

He schools himself. Cole stays blissfully silent, for once.

When Solas has sufficiently calmed, he sits on the bed opposite his child. She is watching him with a wary expression, and he must force himself to meet her gaze.

“Tell me about them,” he says, as gently as he can.

She looks at Cole. The spirit only nods, and even Solas can’t read the intent behind the motion.

“I... I woke up screaming, one night.” She swallows, and she ducks her head so she does not have to look at Solas while she speaks. “I was... young, so they never told me much about it. But from what I can gather, I was screaming so loud I woke up the whole clan. My mother had been trying to wake me up for hours, but no matter what she tried I wouldn’t stop.”

Her scarred palm is resting on her knee. She looks at it for a long, long while.

“I... didn’t remember the nightmare. Nothing but waking up, exhausted. And the next night, the same thing. And the next. Then my Keeper gave me Felandaris tea, and that made the nightmares stop for a little while.”

She just breathes, for a moment. Solas wants to get up and hold her, but the years between them are too many, and he can feel them like all the air has been pulled from the room.

“Six,” Solas curses into the silence. “Six years old, and all they could think was to drug you. Weaken your connection to the Fade, instead of strengthening it—instead of helping you defend yourself, they made you dependent on a substance that would slowly poison you from the inside out.”

Her eyes snap up to his, her brow furrowed in a way that is all too familiar. “Easy for you to say,” she snaps. “We had too many mages already. You’re not Dalish, you don’t know what it’s like—crammed onto the reserve, waiting for surprise visits from the local Templars.”

“And your mother allowed this? Justified crippling your defenses against possession in the name of your clan’s safety?”

She only laughs at that—low and dark and wounded.

Solas’ rage falters. He stares at her as she bows her head, struggles with whatever she almost says.

“I wouldn’t know,” is all she offers.

He almost tells her again. But in this moment, he has so little to offer her but her mother’s blood on his hands, a thousand explanations for leaving that all amount to _you were not enough to keep me here_.

“You’re here now,” Cole says, and it helps a little.

“You said it worked for a time,” Solas says, as gently as he can.

She narrows her eyes at him, and continues hesitantly. “For a few months, before I started throwing up. After that it was...” She closes her eyes and exhales, slowly. “I remembered them all, this time.”

She does not describe them to him, but the only spirits she has named to him are not the sort he would have wished her to meet as a child in the Fade.

“Then Cole found me,” she says, tilting her head. “My Keeper taught me what she could, but I couldn’t make fire or make plants grow or heal people. I started to wake when people shook me, and I stopped screaming all night, and we weren’t afraid of the Templars finding me anymore. When they came and lined us up, they walked right past me.”

_They crippled you to hide you for their own sakes_ , he wants to say. But he has said enough unkind things for one day.

“You have attracted the attention of a powerful demon,” he says, as gently as he can. “Dreamers make enticing hosts, _da’assan_. It is a credit to you that you have survived this long unharmed, with so little training.”

She does not meet his gaze, but he can see the downward turn of her mouth. She disagrees.

“Cole is right,” he says, sitting up straighter. Trying to distance himself from the shaking of her hands, the way she will not meet his gaze. “I can help you, if you wish it.”

She looks up at him, her eyes wide. “How?”

He inclines his head. “I can help you strengthen your own defenses, first and foremost—and I can show you how to control your dreams, instead of letting them control you.”

Her expression falters. “You can’t make them stop.”

He tries not to feel that statement like a physical pain. His fist clenches beside him before he can stop himself—thankfully, she does not seem to notice.

“No more than I could stop your breath,” he tells her, surprising himself with the softness in his own voice. “You need not fear them, _da’assan._ Let me show you.”

Cole murmurs something Solas can’t hear. She inclines her head toward the spirit, but otherwise does not react. She is watching Solas’ face, marking his expression with unwavering focus. He cannot hope to read her thoughts—but that is no change from the time he has spent in her company, no matter how much he might wish differently.

She is not her mother, easy to smile and trust and laugh. She is more like him—wary, questioning, keeping her thoughts and her heart to herself.

“I’ll think on it,” is all she says, and Solas forces himself to nod in response.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I meant to finish this ages ago? November was the month of fic and art exchanges I spent too long procrastinating on. Whoops.


End file.
